George A. Sheehan Quotes

And while these pounds were being shed, while the physiological miracles were occurring with the heart and muscle and metabolism, psychological marvels were taking place as well. Just so, the world over, bodies, minds, and souls are constantly being born again, during miles on the road.

No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences. My times become slower and slower, but the experience of the race is unchanged: each race a drama, each race a challenge, each race stretching me in one way or another, and each race telling me more about myself and others.

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.

The most important thing I learned [from running] is that there is only one runner in this race, and that is me.

Every runner is an experiment of one.

For every runner who tours the world running marathons, there are thousands who run to hear leaves and listen to rain and look to the day when it all is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight.

The real competition is against the little voice inside you that wants to quit

The study of motivation goes back to the Greeks. Their sports were essential to their education. They saw in sports the integration of body, mind and soul, the creation of beauty, the mastering of athletics, and the challenge of competition. A French sociologist points this out. "Sports," he wrote, was part of the education of the citizen. He was expected to engage in exercise for a whole series of reasons that had to do with the shaping of the citizen; the relation between moral good and physical good; and the growth of a person.

No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences.

The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith and to become one's own person, utterly and completely.

The key then is to find your own mountain, otherwise you will be competing with people who are not even in your event, and running up against the 'shoulds' and 'oughts' of that world, and the inevitable frustration and depression and feelings of failure. A person can be complete or incomplete, but one thing is sure, he cannot be someone else.

To make your life a work of art, you must have the material to work with. The race, any race, is just such an experience.

We who run...are different from those who merely study us. We are out there experiencing what they are trying to put into words.

There is nothing more certain than the defeat of the man who gives up.

Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner.

If you want to find the answers to the Big Questions about your soul, you'd best begin with the Little Answers about your body.

Listen to your body. Do not be a blind and deaf tenant.

If you want to win anything - a race, yourself, your life - you have to go a little berserk.